World briefs

CHINA is sending 416 athletes in total to the Rio de Janeiro Games, including 35 former Olympic champions. China’s team includes 160 men and 256 women, who will compete in 210 events across 26 sports. Cai Zhenhua, deputy director of the General Administration of Sport, was quoted by state media as saying the delegation, including coaches and other staff, will be its largest ever at 711. Among them will be 29 coaches

THE PHILIPPINES’ crime-fighting president says he plans to ask Chinese officials why some Chinese citizens who visit his country are allegedly involved in illegal drugs. President Rodrigo Duterte also said that he would not hesitate to grant presidential pardons to law enforcers accused by human rights advocates of abusing their authority in cracking down on narcotics, as long as the soldiers and police involved tell the truth and do not fabricate evidence.

USA The man who killed two police officers and a sheriff’s deputy in Baton Rouge was a former Marine sergeant who served in Iraq and had no known ties to any extremist groups. Gavin Eugene Long, a black man whose last known address was in Kansas City, Missouri, carried out the attack Sunday on his 29th birthday. Police say he was seeking out law enforcement and ambushed them, wounding three other officers before he was killed

INDONESIA automobile sales in June rose over 11 percent from a year earlier, according to data from the industry association yesterday. Car sales were recorded at 91,471 units last month, or 11.4 percent up from a year earlier. The association targets automotive sales to grow 5 percent this year from 1.01 million units in 2015.

KAZAKHSTAN Three police officers and a civilian were gunned down yesterday in an attack on a police station in Kazakhstan’s largest city, echoing similar scenes of carnage in another Kazakh city just a month earlier.

BANGLADESH A special tribunal has sentenced three members of a militia group to death for their role in killings and other serious crimes committed during the country’s independence war against Pakistan 35 years ago.

BRITAIN-EU New British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who recently likened the European Union to Adolf Hitler’s vision for Europe, came to Brussels yesterday to meet for the first time with his EU colleagues, and said he hopes to cooperate closely.